Kochs and Corps Have Bankrolled American Council on Science and Health

The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) poses as an independent science-based organization devoted to outing "junk science," but consumer advocates have called it "a consumer front organization for its business backers" that "glove[s] the hand that feeds it."

The majority of ACSH's funds have come from corporations and major foundations, but a new review of its funding sources by The Progressive Inc.'s Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reveals that some of the hands that feed the group that bashes people concerned about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and chemicals used in factory farming, for example, are those of the Koch brothers, Charles and David Koch, through the Koch family fortune. Koch Industries profits from petroleum products like ammonia fertilizers and other agribusiness-related operations.

ACSH has also published claims about GMOs that make outrageous statements like "opposition to agricultural progress . . . causes blindness and death worldwide." ACSH has also made patently false and easily disprovable claims such as, "[T]here are no alternative technologies available to plant breeders with which new improved varieties can be created to overcome the current limitations of global agriculture to produce sufficient food, feed, fuel, and fiber on available land."

Traditional plant breeding continues to develop crop varieties that are better adjusted to local conditions, produce more, and have other beneficial traits. Take, for example, the work done by the Organic Seed Partnership, a collaborative effort of Oregon State University, the University of Wisconsin, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, Cornell University, and the Organic Seed Alliance.

Tobacco was the rare consumer health hazard about which ACSH had publicly expressed concern. As a result, some of its funding from the food industry dried up after those companies were acquired by Philip Morris (now the global tobacco company Altria), which took umbrage at ACSH's position against tobacco. "ACSH's warnings about cigarette smoking resulted in the loss of substantial contributions from food manufacturers that had been acquired by tobacco companies," ACSH once stated on its website.

But ACSH has sinced received funding from Altria and at least one manufacturer of electronic cigarette maker called "The Safe Cig."

With the rise of e-cigarettes -- and ACSH's receipt of funding from companies selling them -- ACSH has reversed course. It now advocates that "electronic cigarettes should be made as accessible as cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes should be sold widely and lightly regulated..." In another publication, it expresses the hope that the Food and Drug Administration will continue to "allow... millions of desperate addicted smokers continued access to this lifesaving technology."